Ok I posted here a few times about have my beers turn out really grainy tasting. It is really starting to drive me nuts. Anyways, I havent been really careful with water calculation on the last few batches and have actually be using the wrong equipment profile unknowingly. Anyways, were if I used the right profile I would have ended up with 5 gallons of finished wort, I end up with 6.5 with the one I was using. Thats an extra gallon and a half for a 5 gallon recipes. Now, is it possible that the extra amount of sparge water and mash water could be causing this grainy flavor? I batch sparge so I'm not sure if it will or not, but its the only thing I can think of that could be causing this. PS: It's driving me nuts.

You can taste the wort you are draining. If it tastes thin and leaves a sandpaper sensation on your palate, you have gone too far. You can measure the gravity, keep it over 1.010. You can measure the pH, keep it under 6. Tasting is quick and easy.

One thing you can do is reduce the sparge water to a lower pH, 5.5 to 6.

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Jeff RankertAnn Arbor Brewers GuildAHA Governing Committee BJCP NationalHome-brewing, not just a hobby, it is a lifestyle!

If your volume is high by 1.5 gallons or more, you are certainly mashing and/or sparging too much obviously. It is likely you are extracting tannins someplace or other. What is your mash pH? And what is your sparge pH? If you don't know, that would be part of the problem. I'm pretty sure this is a pH issue. You don't want your pH going over about 5.6 during mash or sparge. Sparge pH is probably the real problem, but could it be that you are just using really alkaline water from the get-go?

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Dave

The world will become a much more pleasant place to live when each and every one of us realizes that we are all idiots.

Water volume is definetely way high. There is no doubt about that. OG was supposed to be at 1.057 and it wound up being at 1.042.

I did a brown ale Saturday using an updated equipment profile. Would up with maybe 1 quart more than five gallons. OG was supposed to be 1.055 and I landed around 1.052. So that is def better.

I ran your numbers on my beersmith and it says your grain bill would yield 1.057 with 86.4% efficiency. And according to the mash profile it gave me, you added a gallon of sparge water in your last addition. So you should have had 5.5 gallons of wort which, after trub and fermentation loss, you have 5 gallons of beer. So if you oversparged and yielded 6.5 gallons of 1.042, you got about 69% efficiency. Stop a gallon short and you might have 65% efficiency for your system. By the way, do you happen to brew in a church?

Lost me on the church comment... If I did it correctlyMy efficiency would have been higher, no? I am actually supposed to be using 7.25 - 7.5 gallons per mash. And then when I mash and sparge I end up with a little less than 6.5 gallons per boil which brings me to 5.25 post boil. I was using the wrong profile and it had me using almost 9.5 gallons total.

The first 1.10 gallon batch sparge is just a hot water addition before draining the first runnings from the mash, right? If so, that's not considered a sparge, and it's unlikely that the extra water is a problem... you're rarely going to extract tannins because of too much water in a single batch sparge.

The culprit is probably your water chemistry. Although you're using too much water for your target recipe, you should be able to make a 1.042 ale easily without any tannin extraction or grainy flavor. High pH is most likely the problem, although the symptoms would show up more in lighter colored beers or smaller grain bills.